Potions Class
by SilverMooonshine
Summary: The tales of the seventh years' potions classes, from September to the dreaded NEWT exams, and all the disasters, Marauders' pranks, Death Eater plans, girly chats and general growing up in between. MARAUDERS ERA
1. 1: Potions Buddies

**DISCLAIMER: Unfortunately, I don't own Harry Potter. Otherwise I'd be rich and I'd build Hogwarts.**

**A/N So this started out as a one-shot but I had so may ideas so *deep breath* I am taking The Plunge. Help you all. I'm not sure how long this fic will be yet, I still need to properly plan it out, but hopefully it will be mildly amusing and you won't hate me too much. Enjoy**

**UPDATE: I am so sorry for not updating this for ages! I feel so terrible! I've been involved with the school production for the past week so I've been in school until 11 each night (I know, kill me now) and I'm trying to catch up on all the homework I missed while doing that. Plus it's my GCSE year so, you know, kind of busy. I hate making excuses but I've honestly had no time! I'm nearly on top of it all now though so as an apology I'm going to try and get two chapters up by the end of next week. Screw homework :)**

* * *

_September 5__th__ – Lesson 1_

Lily leant against the cold walls of the dungeon, trying to catch her breath after the sprint to the dungeons. Alice raised her eyebrows at her hasty and somewhat inelegant appearance but Lily gave the smallest shake of her head and Alice turned back to laughing at something Frank had said. Lily would tell her later but waiting for door to the dungeons to open for potions clearly wasn't the time.

Barely had her cheeks returned to their normal colour when the classroom door swung open, revealing the dungeon classroom she'd come to love over the last six-and-a-bit years. She'd miss her corner seat, the wooden table she shared with her friends, even her slightly nutty professor. She noticed that the classroom looked slightly different to how it had last year though.

Before, where there had been five of the square tables, there were now only four. She knew Marlene had dropped out at the end of sixth year after having a nervous breakdown at the end of last year and trying to drown herself in her mysteriously brown invisibility potion. Lily and Alice did try to persuade her to carry on. As they pointed out, despite being the wrong colour, the fact that they couldn't see her head for a good twenty-four hours meant that it was pretty effective.

Still, there should surely be eighteen students left, she hadn't heard about anyone else dropping out. As she looked round the room however, she saw that only four of the five Slytherins had returned, and Julius Croyne of Hufflepuff hadn't made an appearance either. Lily made her way over to the desk in the front corner of the room where Alice was already sat.

"Frank not sitting with us?" She asked with a hint of a sarcastic smile playing at her lips.

"We agreed that we'd sit separately in class, this _is_ out NEWT year, we can't afford to get distracted," Alice replied disappointedly, looking wistfully at the table next to theirs where Frank was sat. He caught her eye and blew her a kiss which she pretended to catch and press to her heart.

Lily ducked her head down to pretend to get a new ink pot out of her bag so that they couldn't see her laughter. Since they got together over the summer, Alice and Frank had become inseparable and made a point of making it clear to everyone that they were very much In Love.

When she felt it was safe to raise her head again, she saw that the Slytherins had commandeered the table furthest away from Slughorn's desk, and were currently snickering about something that Mulciber had said. Lily saw with relief that Severus had sat with his back turned to her; at least she wouldn't have to catch his eye every time she glanced around the room.

Turning to see the desk behind her, she could see that the four of the Ravenclaws had taken the table they had last year and were talking animatedly about the potions they had seen as they'd walked in. Lily smiled and rolled her eyes, turning back to face the front.

"So," Alice began. "Who d'you reckon we'll have sitting with us this year?"

A look of confusion passed over Lily's face, followed by the horror of the realisation she'd just come to. Since Marlene had sat with them last year and there had only been nineteen in the class, they'd been quite happy as their little three. This year however with the Slytherin and Julius gone, and presumably one other to make the class sixteen, and with only four tables of four, there would be no spare seats.

It wasn't that Lily didn't like new people. It was just that she took a while to warm up to them and she'd been really happy with the arrangement last year. Now though, everything would change, and change was something she wasn't particularly fond of.

Lily groaned and was about to reply when loud laughter was heard from just outside the door. Sure enough, three of the four Marauders sauntered through the door, Sirius leading the way and Remus at the back smiling and shaking his head at his friends' antics.

The three stopped in the doorway when they saw the classroom before them. After a brief discussion, Remus headed over to sit with Frank, who had been joined by two more Ravenclaws, and merrily sat down and began chatting.

_Crap._

A million possibilities rushed through her mind, from dropping the class right then to summoning two of the Ravenclaws and sticking them permanently to the two chairs opposite her. Her hand was actually twitching towards her wand when Sirius cheerfully plopped himself down on the seat opposite Alice and James slid gracefully onto the stool next to him. He looked up and shot her a lazy, crooked smile which faltered somewhat when she returned it with a glare so cold it could have frozen fiendfyre.

Since they'd both been appointed heads this year, Lily had avoided James as much as was humanly possible. She made sure to sit on the opposite side of the classroom at the first prefect meeting, and had organised patrols so that there was no way their paths could ever cross. A year of potions sitting opposite him was not something she had envisioned as being a problem.

"So where's the beautiful Marlene this year?" Sirius inquired, grinning sideways at James.

"She… um… didn't feel the subject played to her best strengths" Alice replied slowly, and Lily loved her just a little bit more for twisting the truth slightly from the hysteria that had actually taken place.

Unfortunately, Sirius' memory seemed to have returned and he broke into a wide smile. "Oh yeah, the Invisible Head Incident! Greatest disaster of the year that was, depriving us all of such a lovely sight."

Lily raised her eyebrows and curtly informed Sirius that she would be telling Marlene everything he'd just said.

"Please, be my guest!" He laughed. "The whole school knows that I think she's stunning, funny and wouldn't mind spending an hour or two locked in a broom cupboard with her if you know what I mean." He finished this statement with a wink in Alice's direction and proceeded to get his books out.

"Sorry about him -"

"Hey! Don't apologise for me being the fabulous person that I am!" Sirius protested, whacking James over the head with the textbook he'd been retrieving from his bag.

"Ow Padfoot! DO you know how much those things weigh?!"

"Aw shut up, you get hit with those bloody bludgers all the time; your head can't get much more damaged!"

Lily let their voices fade out as Professor Slughorn, late as usual, bumbled into the classroom.

"Sorry, sorry! I know, late again! This will be the year though girls and boys! I can feel it!"

Lily rolled her eyes at this yearly resolution, and zoned out as she doodled on the corner of the piece of parchment in front of her.

"Today's lesson will just be a quick recap of a potion we made last year, just to get you back into the swing of things! You all remember the Swelling Solution I presume? Turn to page 14 of your books; I will be checking them in one hour!"

The class sprang into action, turning pages and gathering ingredients. The sound of idle chatter filled the room, but the front table was noticeably silent. Sirius seemed to have given up on trying to engage in conversation and the others were bent over their textbooks. Ten minutes later though, Lily was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the lack of talking she was used to.

"It's unusual to see you four separated from each other, Black" she began tentatively, looking up to see three shocked, if slightly relieved, faces looking at her. "What's going on? Finally getting sick of each other?"

"I don't know how you could even insinuate such a thing, Evans! Remus for some reason believes he will be able to concentrate better if he sits away from us, and your friend's little mental episode rather put Peter off this particular class. On a brighter note though, it means we all get to be potions buddies!" He smiled deliriously at her, and she couldn't help but return a small smile.

The rest of the lesson passed without incident, and by the end Lily not only finished her own perfectly brewed Swelling Solution, but also had time to try to fix Alice's gloopy mixture. It wasn't entirely effective, but at least it was stirable now.

Something was wrong though. Throughout the whole lesson, James had been completely polite towards her, not once asking her out as she'd become accustomed to, merely talking to Sirius and focusing on his potion. It was unnerving, and Lily did not like it one bit.

She was relieved when the clock showed two minutes to the end of the lesson, she needed to get to lunch and analyse this with Alice and Marlene. She just couldn't comprehend this sudden change in character. After receiving the usual torrent of praise from Slughorn and promising to check she was available for the next Slug Club party, she grabbed Alice's hand and pulled her out of the room, leaving an amused James Potter staring after her.

* * *

**A/N: I'm going to apologise now for the waffliness of that, I am aware that there was no plot to that whatsoever. It was kind of necessary to set everything up though, so hopefully from now on it might be a tad more interesting. Please review to let me know what you think (or to point out any glaringly obvious mistakes I've made and failed to spot!)**


	2. 2: Serious Case of the Giggles

**Thank you so much for your patience with this chapter! My life is kind of hectic right now as those of you who read the update on my last chapter will know, but it's finally finished! It's also quite scary how much of this chapter I can relate to... Especially the slight breakdown that Lily has which you might be able to relate to (and if you can't I'm ridiculously jealous). It's not the longest chapter you'll ever read but it's got a bit of L/J development and is a bit of fun :)**

* * *

The heavy oak door opened, and the seventh year potions class filed in almost complete silence. There was not one smile amongst the group as the gloomily took their seats and waited for the professor to begin on whatever monotonous lecture they assumed he would have planned for them. Even Lily, for whom potions was a class she looked forward to, couldn't be cheered by the thought of an hour of her favourite subject.

It definitely didn't help that on top of everything, she'd been panicking about this lesson ever since their last class. She'd even found every single one of the Ravenclaws to ask if they would swap seats with her. Even Frank had refused, although there was quite a lot of deliberation considering he would get to sit next to The Ultimate Love of His Life that was Alice Fortescue.

She just could not take sitting opposite bloody James Potter! Even when she had been trying to concentrate, he had always been there in the corner of her eye. Trying to complete her essay on the properties of aging potions had been a nightmare; all she could think of was what he would be writing, whether he had completed it yet, whether she would have to swap essays with him to mark them.

Of course her friends had been absolutely no help whatsoever in this situation. Alice had mysteriously disappeared with Frank after finishing her own essay in ten minutes flat. She was really going to have to have a word with her about how her love life was having a detrimental effect on her education. After two hours of crumpled up parchment being tossed into the fire however, Marlene had thought to ask her what was wrong.

Lily had tried to explain, but had barely got half way through what was bothering her when a squeal at a pitch previously unheard by mankind was emitted from Marlene's mouth.

"You _so_ fancy James Potter! I _knew_ his persistency would pay off!"

As Lily looked across at James who had entered the potions classroom with his usual swagger, though somewhat more downcast than normal, she just knew that wasn't true. So yes she could barely keep her mind off him, but that didn't mean she was in love with the guy! It was simply because she was so hyper-aware of everything he did, and that was only because she'd spent so many years having to watch his every unpredictable move.

Having settled her mind slightly, she smiled at Potter and Black as they took their seats. James looked as though he was about to say something but Professor Slughorn ran in at that moment, clapping his hands together for their attention.

"Good mor-" the professor began is his booming voice, before coming to an abrupt stop at the sight of sixteen miserable faces staring back at him. "Well at least I thought it was. What on earth has happened that is so terrible that you all look ready to take a large swig of Death-Cap Draught? Hmm? Lily, m'girl! Where's the smile that usually so brightens my Friday morning?"

Looking around Lily realised that the rest of class took this as a sign for her to go right on and explain. With a sign, she told their sorrowful tale. "We got our transfiguration essays back, and we all got Trolls and Dreadfuls, even Remus only got a Poor! So we've all got to redo the essay and Professor McGonagall has banned us all from the Hogsmede trip tomorrow! She says we've got to rewrite our essays instead and hand them in, and we'll have to keep rewriting them all day until we pass, even if we're up all night and into Sunday! It's the first trip to Hogsmede of the year you see, sir, and we've all been looking forward to it all summer! I was looking forward to butterbeer, and Honeyduke's and Zonko's, and it's so lovely at this time of year! We all tried our hardest but she just doesn't understand that we can't dedicate all of our time to transfiguration! We have other subjects too! And now we don't even get our well-deserved break, at this rate we'll all just go mad or have a breakdown from the constant pressure and continuous work, and then we'll all fail anyway!"

Realising she had stood up in her passionate objection to the cruelty of teachers; Lily blushed and hastily sat back down. Or tried to. In actual fact she missed her stool completely and landed with a thud on the cold stone floor. While this caused great amusement for the Slytherin table, Lily's cheeks flamed as red as her hair as she tried to collect herself and get up.

In a flash, a hand was in front of her face and another on her shoulder to steady her as a strong arm pulled her to her feet. Looking up gratefully, she saw that the arm was attached to none other than James Potter. Hastily retracting her hand and muttering a thank you she hurried to her seat, almost tripping over her feet again in the process.

After checking that she was okay, Professor Slughorn cleared his throat to indicate he was about to make An Announcement.

"Right, so I wasn't going to do this lesson until next week but it would really be more appropriate today. Get out your cauldrons, the instructions are on the board."

With a wave of his wand, a list of scrawled instructions appeared on the blackboard at the front and everyone began to assemble the ingredients named. In the corner however, one of the Ravenclaws tentatively raised her hand.

"Um… Excuse me… Sir? What's the name of the potion? It's not on the board…"

"Aha, you'll have to work that one out for yourself," and with a mischievous grin he settled himself down at his desk.

"So then, Lily, you're the resident potions expert. What we making here? Because I'm kind of thirsty and I need to know if it's going to kill me or not if I drink it."

"Black, you should never drink anything in a potions classroom, we were taught that in first year! And how am I supposed to know? I haven't actually got around to memorising the textbook yet, some of us actually do the homework we're set."

"Ouch, Evans. Low blow. I didn't see you getting a better grade than me in transfiguration though. Is that why you're so tetchy? Never got a T before?"

Lily bit back a retort and furiously began chopping up her bat spleens, tears stinging at the back of her eyes. He was right, she'd never gotten such a low grade before; she was going to fail her NEWTs and end up living on the streets of Knockturn Alley.

"Erm… Lily?" She looked up at the sound of Potter's voice, which he took as an invitation to continue. "If you want, it's just a suggestion; I can look through your essay tonight, point out a few things. Then is you take it to McGonagall she might let you go to Hogsmede tomorrow. I mean, it sounded like you really wanted to go earlier, but it's up to you, whatever…" he trailed off, running his hand nervously through his hair.

A million thoughts rushed into her mind at once, all clamouring for her attention. Shaking her head, she looked up and met his hazel eyes.

"Would you really do that? Hang on… What grade did you get then? I didn't hear about anyone getting higher than a poor."

"He got Exceeds Expectations, but he pretended to get Dreadful, because he's a modest guy our James," Sirius helpfully butted in, earning a look of death from 'our James'.

"An E? Really? Sorry, I didn't mean to sound quite so surprised there. What I meant was, well done. And yes I'd love you to give me a hand with the essay, thank you so much." Lily bit her lip, it having suddenly dawned on her that at this rate she and James were going to be the only two seventh years in Hogsmede tomorrow. Could she ask though? She didn't really have much of a choice. "Could you do me a massive favour though? Could you help Alice and Marlene too? I mean, Hogsmede won't be much fun if I don't have any friends to go with… I'll cover your patrol tonight as a thank you?"

"Sure," he replied, although he looked noticeably disappointed by this latest development.

The four returned their attentions to their cauldrons, which were now bubbling a delicate green colour, idly chatting about ingredients and their remarkable success at brewing this particular draught.

Looking round the room, Lily noticed they weren't the only ones. The whole class had identical potions exactly matching the description in the instructions. As everyone added their powdered dragon claw, a silver mist began to fill the room. Lily's eyes widened in fear. She hadn't got a clue what this gas could be! She knew Professor Slughorn wasn't as crazy as Professor Kettleburn who she was sure was going to kill a student some day with his 'experiments', but he wasn't exactly their sanest of teachers either.

Not able to hold her breath from the potentially poisonous gas any longer, Lily gasped in a small breath of air, covering her mouth to stop any of the gas going in her mouth. To her horror, she tasted a sweet taste on her tongue, and was about to prepare for the end when she felt a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Noticing she wasn't dead yet, others started to tentatively breathe in the mist. Lily's smile grew bigger into a grin, until her face ached in the best way possible. Looking like a Cheshire cat, she glanced up in amusement when a girlish giggle escaped from James' lips. Though he turned bright red at the noise, the other three echoed it with giggles of their own.

Within ten seconds, the entire class was in hysterical giggles, clutching at their bellies and wiping tears from their eyes. For a second Lily thought she would be able to stop, but soon gave that thought up when she saw Avery's aggressive face contorted in uncontrollable laughter. The sight was so unnatural it brought on such a wave of hysterics she was unable to breathe for a good minute or two.

As the mist began to fade, and the giggles died down, Lily noticed that Sirius was no longer by his cauldron, but had made his way over to the stores cupboard and had returned with a glass. Before Lily cold say a word to stop him, his hand had swooped down into his cauldron and he knocked the potion back in one. Lily felt a strange mix of being horrified and impressed, which she just expressed as a high pitched giggle, still incapable of coherent speech.

The effect was instantaneous. Sirius rolled round on the floor howling with laughter, his usual barking laugh gone and replaced with the most hilarious noise the rest of the class had ever heard. This only caused another burst of hysterics, this time real, and everyone crowded round to watch Sirius - who by now had streams of tears pouring from his eyes.

As the effects wore off and Sirius regained enough control to take his seat, Professor Slughorn stood up at the front of the classroom, smiling widely.

"Well I trust you all enjoyed that?" This was met by enthusiastic nods and a giggle from Remus, which nearly set the whole class off again. "I do think you need some enjoyment in your lives what with all this stress. For those who didn't work it out, that was the Laugh-Inducing Potion, a relatively easy though potentially dangerous potion. Not very likely to come up in your exams though, so I reckon we can have a day off homework for this lesson. Off you pop then."

Still grinning, the class collected up their things and left the room in a decidedly better mood than they had entered it, chattering excitedly and calling out thanks to their professor, not even realising or caring that they were half an hour late for lunch.

* * *

**Well I hope you enjoyed that! It was a bit rushed because I'm aware that I've kept you waiting for waaayyy too long for this chapter and I felt really bad, so please let me know if there are any mistakes! I'm aiming to have the next chapter up by the end of next week, I'm so sorry it can't be sooner but I'm away all weekend, but I'll do my best. Until then, lots of internet hugs and smiles, please review! :)**


End file.
